23 November 2009

I will destroy him!

With the inevitable revival of the 90's as retro style, because it's time, comes the revival of bad action movies. Universal Soldier: Regeneration literary revives Jean-Claude Van Damme's character from his 1992 film, directed by no other than Roland Emmerich, and puts him again on the collision path with Dolph Lundgren. One of UFC fighters, Andrei Arlovski, is also in this.

When a team of former Soviet radicals seizes Chernobyl and threatens to unleash a lethal cloud of radioactive gas one hundred times deadlier than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the US military brings in a bio-mechanically enhanced super soldier, Luc Deveraux (JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME), to foil the plot. As Deveraux fights his way into the plant, he faces off with his now revived former nemesis, Andrew Scott (DOLPH LUNDGREN), and a newly ‘updated’ Next Generation Unisol (former UFC Heavyweight Champion ANDREI ARLOVSKI), in a battle of battles, and must save the day.

This looks better than I expected, compared to the terrible second Universal Soldier and ignoring other two without Van Damme. It looks like they are trying to take the action to higher level, despite budget limitations, to make it more realistic and continuous with the help of smart camera movements and filming angles. I am pretty sure the usual cheese and corny dialogs will be there as well, but at least it's a sign they are trying. And it's very clever they use UFC fighters, these guys are used to get punched in the head all the time, so they don't mind to take a real hit or two when needed, you know, for the art.